As organizations increasingly rely on cloud storage for hosting applications, software packages, updates, and static assets, attackers are finding new ways to exploit abandoned or misconfigured cloud resources.
New reporting from Cybersecurity News highlights a growing bucket hijacking attack, where threat actors take control of deleted or unclaimed cloud storage buckets that are still referenced by active applications and websites.
Unlike traditional cloud attacks that exploit software vulnerabilities, bucket hijacking abuses poor cloud resource management, turning trusted storage locations into malware distribution or phishing infrastructure.
Cloud storage buckets are commonly used to host:
When a bucket is deleted but applications continue referencing it, attackers can register the same bucket name and begin serving malicious content from what appears to be a trusted source.
Because the application still points to the original bucket name, users and systems unknowingly retrieve attacker-controlled content.
According to the report, bucket hijacking exploits orphaned cloud storage references rather than vulnerabilities in cloud platforms themselves.
An organization deletes a cloud storage bucket or allows it to expire.
However, applications, websites, scripts, or software updates continue referencing that bucket.
Once the bucket name becomes available, an attacker creates a new bucket using the exact same name.
Since cloud storage providers often allow previously deleted bucket names to be reused, the attacker effectively assumes ownership of the resource.
The attacker uploads malicious content to the hijacked bucket.
Depending on what the original bucket served, this may include:
Applications requesting those resources unknowingly retrieve attacker-controlled content.
Because applications continue trusting the original bucket location, users receive malicious resources without realizing the source has changed.
This creates opportunities for:
The attack succeeds by exploiting trust rather than software vulnerabilities.
Bucket hijacking presents a unique challenge because the infrastructure itself appears legitimate.
Several characteristics contribute to its effectiveness:
This makes the attack difficult to detect using vulnerability scanners alone.
The rise of bucket hijacking demonstrates that cloud security extends beyond configuration and access controls.
Organizations must also maintain visibility into:
Without continuous governance, abandoned resources can become unexpected attack vectors.
Preventing bucket hijacking requires visibility into cloud assets, outbound communication, application behavior, and security governance.
Seceon’s aiSIEM / CGuard helps organizations:
By correlating cloud activity across users, applications, and infrastructure, Seceon helps uncover suspicious behavior that may indicate cloud resource abuse.
Seceon’s aiXDR-PMax provides visibility into:
This enables organizations to detect attacks even after malicious resources are delivered.
Cloud asset governance plays an important role in preventing bucket hijacking.
Seceon’s aiCompliance CMX360 helps organizations:
Maintaining governance over cloud resources reduces the likelihood of orphaned assets becoming attack vectors.
Bucket hijacking demonstrates that not every cyberattack begins with exploiting a vulnerability. Sometimes, attackers simply wait for organizations to abandon resources that are still trusted by applications and users.
As cloud adoption continues to grow, managing the lifecycle of cloud assets becomes just as important as securing them.
Organizations should regularly audit cloud storage references, remove unused dependencies, and continuously monitor cloud environments for signs of resource abuse.
In today’s cloud-first world, maintaining trust requires more than securing active infrastructure. It also means ensuring that forgotten resources cannot become tomorrow’s attack surface.
Learn how bucket hijacking threatens cloud resources and how security monitoring and cloud governance can help reduce the risk.
A cloud bucket hijacking attack occurs when an attacker gains control of a cloud storage resource or reclaims a bucket name that an application or service still trusts. Depending on the attack method, the attacker may host malicious content or redirect data to an attacker-controlled destination. The risk arises when systems continue trusting a resource without verifying its ownership and lifecycle.
If a bucket is deleted while applications, scripts, or deployment processes still reference its name, an attacker may be able to claim that name again where the cloud provider permits reuse. The attacker could then serve malicious files from the reclaimed resource. In other bucket-hijacking scenarios, an attacker with sufficient permissions may delete and recreate a bucket to redirect an existing data stream. The exact attack path depends on the cloud service and the permissions involved.
Bucket hijacking can abuse legitimate cloud services and trusted resource references rather than relying on a conventional software exploit. A resource may appear normal even when its ownership, destination, or content has changed. Security teams should therefore monitor cloud control-plane events, bucket deletion and creation, ownership changes, access permissions, data destinations, and unexpected application or endpoint behavior—not rely on vulnerability scanning alone.
Organizations should inventory cloud storage resources and their dependencies, remove stale application references before deleting buckets, restrict bucket deletion permissions, and verify resource ownership. They should also enforce least-privilege access, use cloud-provider controls that limit data transfers to trusted destinations, and alert on suspicious storage changes. Regular reviews of cloud assets and resource lifecycle processes help reduce the risk of abandoned resources becoming attack vectors.
Seceon aiSIEM / CGuard can help security teams correlate available cloud audit events, identity activity, and related security telemetry to investigate suspicious storage operations or unusual data flows. Seceon aiXDR-PMax can help investigate suspicious endpoint behavior associated with downloaded content or subsequent compromise, when relevant endpoint telemetry is available. Detection depends on supported integrations, collected data, and deployment configuration; these tools should complement direct cloud resource and permission controls.
Explore the Seceon AI SIEM page for more information.
Seceon aiCompliance CMX360 supports compliance and governance activities by helping organizations assess controls and organize evidence for audits. In a cloud security program, teams can use governance reviews to examine resource lifecycle procedures, access policies, and compliance requirements. It should be used alongside technical cloud inventory, ownership verification, and preventive controls; compliance workflows alone do not prevent bucket hijacking.
Visit the Seceon website to learn more about its cybersecurity offerings.
